fresco

A friend in Alberta was just saying he and his wife have been enjoying kobe beef burgers lately. A benefit, to them, at any rate, of Japan banning all Canadian beef, including the kobe variety produced almost entirely for export.

That's all right. Reading about it is the next best thing and quite appropriate. I think a "real" encounter with Semi Homemade would not be right, somehow.

We get some pretty bad stuff up here, but Food Network Canada seems to have passed so far on carrying Semi Homemade. I feel deprived.

You have me at a disadvantage. I've always been able to avoid Kool Whip, somehow.

An office potluck is probably the least likely place to meet with success if you bring dishes that are out of the mainstream. I'm not sure I'd condemn co-workers for lacking imagination or taste, though. In a situation like this, the safe bet would be to go with whatever seems most familiar and least challenging, whatever that is.

We're blessed, in many ways, with having the technology and infrastructure to produce, preserve and transport an amazing variety of food across great distances, and make it available to just about everyone. But it cuts both ways. The aerosol can, for instance, has allowed food processors to introduce some hideous stuff which has all but replaced the real thing, including fake whipping cream. What's your nomination for food technology or innovation we could all do without?

I've always understood that printer's ink contained some chemical that made it at least mildly antibacterial, which would make newsprint ideal for wrapping takeout food. Any chemists know for sure?

I wonder if the problem doesn't start with the researchers themselves, as well as the journals in which they publish. It doesn't take a lot of smarts to figure out that anything to do with the food supply, good or bad, is going to generate an intense amount of interest if it is spun the right way. That farmed salmon retain certain chemicals has been known for a long time, for instance, but if you go out on a limb and start prescribing how little of this stuff people should eat to be on the safe side, you know you are going to be in the headlines. There's a lot of pressure on academic researchers these days, and many of their journals have become as competitive as newspapers.

This week, the big news is farmed salmon, with a new study claiming that most of it is full of PCBs and to be avoided, while governments, producers and others claim that it poses little or no risk to human health. Next week it will be something else--an authoritative source claiming that something is either going to kill you or prevent some terrible disease or condition if you eat or drink enough of it. Do you just laugh all of this stuff off, or do you actually alter your consumption patterns based on what you read or hear? And how do you make such decisions?

Clifford, great story. What, besides the Baco Noir, did you bring back? What do you recommend?

Some people get really upset with their parents' cooking: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/...1467556,00.html

Interesting concept--defining a state of mind by what people drink. Isn't there a tv show about (and called) "Lofters"?

Fascinating piece, ExtraMSG. I was aware that Franzia and Two Buck Chuck were not popular among Napa Valley producers, but didn't know about Franzia's criminal conviction for grape fraud. This stuff is not sold anywhere near where I live, so have never tried it. But as someone in the story observed, it's a great time to be a wine drinker--there seems to be another country or region hitting international wine markets with very nice stuff priced at $US10 a bottle or less every other month.

I wonder if it is also possible that Fair Trade, having developed a recognizable "brand" for which people are prepared to pay extra, might now develop separate labels which address some of the taste and quality issues, perhaps as "superpremium" Fair Trade products?

Actually, no. Think pretty well 100% of canned salmon is wild--mostly sockeye and pink, but some coho as well. And you can blame (or thank) Canada, at least partially, and indirectly, for the drop in salmon prices. About 20 years ago (perhaps more) Canadian scientists with government backing and Canadian fish and technology helped Chile establish a salmon farming industry. They can now produce fish cheaper than pretty well anyone else in the world and do so in enormous quantities, which has tended to put a very low ceiling on all salmon prices. Much of the farmed salmon consumed in Canada now is from Chile, although this is not widely advertised, since Canada has major salmon farming operations on both coasts. Ludicrous.

Have you ever been to Merida? Each plaza in the city hosts a free concert one night of the week. So every night, you can attend one. I heard a world-class tenor there one evening. It's just magical. Yep. And if you're interested in renting a beach house for a couple of weeks or months, Merida is the place to do it--or, rather, the beach area around Progreso about 30 km away. There are tons of places owned by people in the city, who usually only use them in the summer months and at Easter. We rented a place a few years ago, right on the ocean, completely furnished, with a guard/handyman and had one of our best holidays ever.

<ahem> - I'm not that old. It was actually the '80s... Of course not. I thought you were precocious.

Who said nothing good ever came of the Sixties?

Scientists are now reported to be trying to clone cattle that are resistant to BSE, which strikes me as wrong-headed: http://www.local6.com/news/2750098/detail.html

My mother wasn't and isn't much interested in cooking, but was competent in the kitchen. My father, by contrast, was one of those rare individuals with an absolute tin ear to the music of food. He went through a blessedly brief period when he attempted to cook and bake. About the most challenging thing he took on were pies and my siblings and I, years later, still talk about how incomparably inedible they were, and how proud Dad was of them. Odd, because his mother was quite talented with pastry.

Why don't use just use a covered outdoor natural gas grill as a second oven? Mine turns out everything from bread to turkey, and our climate is a lot less accomodating than yours.

Fresco: I respectfully disagree. My wife and I both work full time and we have a 6 year old. We have a "Mostly Homemade" dinner at the dining room table an average of 6 nights a week. I pick my son up at 5:15, take him home and we work at getting dinner together. And dinner for me is rarely from a box, can, or takeout. I bake all our bread and make our breakfast cereals. I make our sausage and hope to learn the fine craft of cheesemaking soon. And yes, in my spare time I've been known to knit a sweater, blanket, or scarf. I know not everyone has the interest or the motivation to take it that far. But many people won't ever try if someone is out there telling them that feeling your family crap is the way to go. It is really, when you boil it down, a matter of priorities. We need someone out stumping for families to eat dinner together more often, with the tv off and the phone turned down. We need a cheerleader to say "Get in that kitchen and rattle them pots and pans!" And we need someone teaching basic cooking skills without pretense and giving people a boost in self esteem. Damn -- we need Julia back. G-d bless her! I'm sure you manage to do this, and that's admirable. But the fact is, the trend is against home cooking right across Canada, the United States and, horror of horrors, Europe, including France and Italy. Indeed, I often think that the deep interest in cooking and artisanal food among educated, affluent people is more nostalgia for a bygone era than anything else. Wasn't it McLuhan who first observed that objects and practices become revered just as they are becoming obsolete?

Somehow, I don't think one good or bad tv example is going to make much of a difference. The cards are stacked against a widespread revival of home cooking from scratch. You would have to turn back the clock to a time when there were two parents in almost every household, one parent (invariably mom) stayed home and dad worked a regular day which usually ended at 5 p.m. And this seems to be about as undesireable as it is implausible.

Doesn't wood ash accomplish the same thing? Although I'd be careful to use hardwoods. Edit to add: Just googled, and someone has a formula for using wood ash to make lye. They claim it is far better, for various reasons, than the store bought stuff, for treating corn: http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/1999/bdnow/msg04104.html

I don't know if we are actually economizing on food--suspect not, overall. But one consequence of cooking almost everything from scratch is that the volume of washing up has increased to the point where we go through a litre of dish detergent (plus a shitload of dishwasher powder) every week or so and now buy the stuff in 10-litre jugs.